Collected here are assorted news items and new music that I like to share, beginning with breaking news about… US!

HOLD FAST! GRINDVIOLENCE COMPILATION

A year and a half ago we launched NO CLEAN SINGING’s very own Bandcamp page and released our first compilation of music in cooperation with Grind To Death. The title was The Only Good Tory and it featured 46 tracks from 46 UK bands on the cutting edge of grind, powerviolence, harsh crust, and fast core. Actually, I don’t know why I’m writing in the past tense because that compilation is STILL available on Bandcamp and it’s still free.

And now, a year and a half later, we’re about to do it again. Once again, the lion’s share of the work has been done by Alex Layzell, the man behind Grind To Death and Kydoimas Records — whose releases can be found here. This new compilation is entitled HOLD FAST! and features artwork by Mark Rennie, which you can gaze upon at the top of this post. It includes 20 tracks by 20 kickass bands.

The compilation will become available for FREE download tomorrow on our Bandcamp page, and it will come with a downloadable zine that in itself is a work of art (more details about that tomorrow). Later, the comp will become available on tape with the zine included in hard-copy form. Here’s the track list:Continue reading »

With the album collections that Professor D. Grover the XIIIth and Austin Weber recommended earlier today, we’ve thrown a lot of music your way in a short stretch of time. But does that mean we will stop? No, of course not. We’re like a hyperactive yappy little dog that will not stop trying to hump your leg. So you might as well just sit back and prepare for a sticky leg.

NADER SADEK

Three years ago the extravagantly talented musical and visual artist Nader Sadek delivered an album named In the Flesh, with the help of an eye-popping line-up of guest musicians. Now, Sadek has re-recorded a song from the album named “Mechanic Idolatry” and re-titled the new work “Re:Mechanic”. This time the recording artists include Travis Ryan (Cattle Decapitation), Mike Hrubovcak (Monstrosity), Flo Mounier (Cryptopsy), Rune Eriksen (Mayhem, Aura Noir), Orestis Nalmpantis (Greek band Genna Apo Kolo), and Kelly Conlon (Death, Monstrosity).

But that’s not all. Sadek has also directed a new video for the song that debuted today at DECIBEL. Visit that link to learn more about Sadek’s vision for the video. But to see it without delay, just go past the jump.Continue reading »

(In this post, TheMadIsraeli reviews the unrelenting fucking hatred unleashed by the debut album from Canada’s Rage Nucléaire.)

Getting sonically fucked up is about the only way any true, sane metalhead finds any peace in this life full of shit. What better possible recipe for achieving this catharsis than a furious combination of black metal and grindcore?

What if said blackened grind mixture was fronted by the almighty Lord Worm, one of the most brutal vocalists and most eloquent poets to exist in metal’s history?

What if I told you it’s fucking awesome? Cause it is.

Rage Nucléaire’s debut Unrelenting Fucking Hatred is about as close to channeling its own title as you’re ever going to get. It has all the makings of a great extreme metal album. It’s fast as fuck; it’s atonal yet also brings epic melodies to bear when needed; it sounds like total fucking shit in the most legit badass kvlt way possible; and it makes me feel like my jaw bone is being disassembled with a hammer.

Also, it feels like my flesh is being filleted, like I’m being prepared for an exquisite meal; an exquisite meal with a side of curb-stomping, eye-gouging ear rape.Continue reading »

I think I’m back home after a week of being here, there, and everywhere. I woke up disoriented, jet-lagged, and thinking about the lyrics to “Once In A Lifetime” (Talking Heads). Was that my beautiful wife in bed next to me? Is this my beautiful house I’m in? Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down. Letting the days go by, water flowing underground. Into the blue again . . .

I’ll get my shit together before the day is out, but at the moment the shit is kind of scattered and incoherent. After a week of having not much time to call my own, I’m also way fuckin’ behind on the metal. A lot of catching up to do, a lot of new music to hear, a lot of gibberish to write. But I ought to make a start right now, shouldn’t I?

For example: Yesterday our friends at The Monolith turned on the site and made it go live. If you haven’t checked out that site, you should give it a whirl. A couple of very good dudes who’ve been slumming here at NCS after The Number of the Blog shut down — groverXIII and DGR — will be writing over there now, as will a bunch of other folks from other blogs who we’ve gotten to know and admire since we started NCS. We wish all of them much success with the new venture.

I also heard some new tracks that I thought you might enjoy, from ILSA, Devolved, and Rage Nucleaire.

To begin, I saw that CVLT Nation has started streaming a new ILSA track from their new album Intoxicantations (to be released by Baltimore’s A389 Recordings on Nov 23). I fuckin’ love the artwork for the album, which was created by ILSA’s drummer, Joshy:Continue reading »

I realize that recently I’ve been making these “Seen and Heard” posts a daily occurrence when I should have been concentrating more in depth on individual albums or EPs. But I’ve been fucking off a lot pressed for time recently, and although I’ve fallen even further behind on reviewing albums and EPs I like, I’m at least trying to keep up with the news — especially news that involves new music that really strikes a chord.

Yesterday was a big fucken bonanza of new music. In fact, I found so many likable new discoveries that I’ll have not one but two of these posts today (and maybe more, depending on how much I fuck off how today goes). This is the first one, and I’m really excited about the songs I’ve collected here, all of which are dramatically different shades of black metal — from Rage Nucléaire (Montreal), Decline of the I (Paris), and Black September (Chicago).

RAGE NUCLÉAIRE

Late June it was when I saw an announcement by Season of Mist that they had signed a four-piece black metal band called Rage Nucléaire. It got my attention because the band was formed by Lord Worm, former vocalist of Cryptopsy. I wrote about the event (here) despite having no music to hear. Now I do.

As SOM begins the ramp-up to the debut of Unrelenting Fucking Hatred, they’ve now disclosed the release dates — Nov. 6 for North America and Oct. 19 for the rest of the [fortunate] world — and they’ve started streaming the album’s opening track, the name of which is “Violence Is Golden”. And you beginning to detect a theme about the music?Continue reading »

As explained in Part 1 of this feature, I mean no disrespect to any of the bands mentioned herein when I refer to them as riff-raff. I guess I’ve been called a motherfucker so many times by bands during live shows that I’ve become convinced we’re all riff-raff, and surely that’s how the straight world looks at all of us, so why the hell not? Plus, there’s the appeal of alliteration.

This post is a continuation of my earlier report on news, music, and videos I saw over the last 24 hours that I thought were worth sharing. Even after dividing this into two parts, there’s still a shitload of stuff left to pass along. So I will try to be brief with my verbiage (yeah, like that will happen). In this post: Reports of new Season of Mist albums from Rage Nucleaire (featuring Cryptopsy’s Lord Worm) and Khonsu (featuring the Grønbech brothers and Thebon from Keep of Kalessin); Jucifer’s new Bandcamp page; new music videos from Profane Omen and Whitechapel; new songs from A Band of Orcs and Dysrhythmia; and for Mike Patton fans in the audience, a blurb about the revival of Tomahawk.

RAGE NUCLEAIRE

I just saw this, but three days ago Season of Mist announced the signing of a four-piece black metal band called Rage Nucleaire. It got my attention because the band was formed by Lord Worm, former vocalist of Cryptopsy. The band are working on a debut album called Unrelenting Fucking Hatred and they describe the music as a “hate-filled blend of melodic black metal and violent industrial.” Their list of influences range from early Emperor and Immortal to Anaal Nathrakh and Mysticum. The other members are bassist Alvater (ex-Frozen Shadows), guitarist/keyboardist Dark Rage, and drummer Fredrik Widigs.

The band have a new Facebook page here, which will allow me and you to sniff around for more info as it emerges. At the moment, although I’m hungry for some music by this group, I have none to share, nor do I have a release date yet.Continue reading »